Faith Works 5-22

Faith Works 5-22-10

Jeff Gill

 

A Long and Winding Road Through History

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We clergy can find ourselves bemoaning, on occasion, our lot in life with the travel we have to do through the week.

 

Pastoral care today can take a fairly modestly-sized congregational leader, in any random week, to four or five different hospitals across multiple counties, and in and out of nursing care facilities on main streets and hidden off country roads.

 

HIPAA has taken away our ability to use the phone as a tool to save steps and trips (if you don't know what a HIPAA is, think the "hippopotamus" of legislative unintended consequences), and health care consolidation means parking garages are often the size of urban shopping center complexes, while the office to get your clergy parking permit stamped is often better hidden than the patient complaint and refund department.

 

The schedule can get weird, too, but that's more and more something people deal with in a variety of vocations as more and more of us do three people's jobs and are thankful for the work at all. What isn't as common, even for those situations, is to have to take your car in a route that would do justice to a delivery service driver, planning out how save miles and time without going through any particularly infamous speed traps.

 

We do have that car, though, and not a mule. It's always eased my irritation at the amount of time I've spent sitting in traffic to reflect on my forebearers in ministry, and what they had to do just to preach on Sundays, let alone call on families when they could.

 

In my own tradition through the Restoration Movement, Alexander Campbell rode out of Bethany, (now West) Virginia above Wheeling, and with the occasional help of riverboats traveled from New England to New Orleans and back again. Horses when he could get them, mules when he had to, which was often, and not occasionally on foot.

 

Francis Asbury, the pioneering Methodist bishop, left journals which detail the thousands of miles he covered over decades of ministry. It is truly awe inspiring to read, if a bit mind-numbing (which is not all that probably went numb for Bishop Asbury). Philander Chase, an early bishop of The Episcopal Church in Ohio & Illinois, traveled to do fundraising for what became Kenyon College and a few other higher ed institutions, not only all across this continent, but frequently crossing the Atlantic to England in the early 1800s.

 

"The Amazing Race," indeed.

 

So I'm looking forward to hearing tonight, Saturday evening at 6:00 pm, from Rev. James Quinn. He died in 1847, which means this is a quite a trip for him, but as an old circuit riding preacher he's up to the challenge.

 

Tonight at Centenary UMC in Granville, in Shepherd Hall, Rev. Quinn will get a little help from Rev. David Maze, a former pastor at Heath UMC, who will talk about the circuit rider days in Licking County, and as part of Centenary's bicentennial, will preach tomorrow at 8:00, 9:20, and 11:00 as Rev. Quinn.

 

On pg. 565 of Hill's 1881 "History of Licking County," it's recorded that Rev. "James Quinn … took his place on the Hock-Hocking circuit [in 1804]. There is no record they preached any where else in the county [previously] than in the little church at Hog Run [now White Chapel UMC], but it is presumable that they occasionally preached in Newark, but if they did they must have held the service under a tree, or in the cabin of some settler, as no building had been erected for church purposes, and was not erected for years afterwards."

 

"Mr. Quinn was continued upon this circuit, being re-appointed in 1805, but he was sent to the Scioto circuit when about one-half of his second year had expired, making his whole service on the circuit, a period of eighteen months, running into the early part of 1806. Before he left the village Newark was attached to it, and his congregation usually numbered "from fifteen to thirty persons," says Mr. Smucker. Here then is the first evidence of the establishment of the first Methodist class in Newark. A small class existed here which Mr. Quinn left in 1806, composed of five or six persons, who met at the cabin of Abraham Wright, esq., an emigrant of 1802, from Washington County, Pennsylvania, who was at this period, and had been for some time, an acting justice of the peace."

 

All I can add to that is: "there were giants in the earth in those days."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, but he's no circuit rider; tell him about your travels in faith at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 5-20

Notes From My Knapsack 5-20-10

Jeff Gill

 

Enduring Grace & Lasting Values

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This week, I'm happy to celebrate, is the 25^th time the Lovely Wife and I remember our wedding day back at University Church, across the street from the Purdue campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. It was and is an ecumenical campus ministry, and we met there at a church committee meeting (yes, you can flirt at a committee meeting, it just takes a little more couth and caution).

 

Historically speaking, 25 years isn't all that much, though today it's a little more remarkable. I think about James & Euphemia Reeder, now gracing the Avery-Downer House in a pair of Amzi Godden portraits I've already mentioned, married in 1801, together 51 years until his death in 1852.

 

Jonathan & Margaret Benjamin, early pioneers (Lillie Jones was their daughter) were married for 76 years until Margaret's passing in 1835, with ten children, 77 grandchildren, and at least one great-great-grandchild to hold before they died.

 

76 years. Whoa.

 

From page 602 of Hill's 1881 "History of Licking County," about the Benjamins: "Having passed through the French and Indian wars, and through the war of the Revolution, and having suffered much and long by Indian depredations, both in the loss of friends and property, the finer feelings of his nature had be come blunted to such an extent that lie seemed to have lost most of his sympathy for his fellow man. Still he was a man of religious habits, and of good morals, but was generally considered to be a man that was naturally morose and unsociable, and was not known through life to leave expressed his forgiveness of the Indian race. He was not a reading man, hence what time he gave to social intercourse with his neighbors, was given to the relation of personal experience or to business matters. He was a soldier, or frontiersman, most his life. It was not until he was about eighty years old that he consented to settle himself for the balance of his life. He bought in the woods and cleared up his last farm after he was seventy-eight years old. Notwithstanding this life of hardships, the iron constitution of himself and his excellent wife sustained them to a great age. Mrs. Benjamin possessed social qualities that in a great measure compensated for the lack of them in her husband. They lived together as man and wife nearly eighty years…"

 

They became part of the new Methodist class meeting formed in Granville in 1810 by William & Sarah Gavit, themselves married more than 50 years before her passing. James B. Finley, himself married to Hannah for 56 years until his death, was an early Ohio preacher who supported the fledgling congregation of Gavits, Benjamins, and Montgomerys when he passed through as the assigned "circuit rider."

 

James Quinn followed Finley, and it's to celebrate the Centenary 200^th anniversary that he will return to preach this weekend – a neat trick given that he died in 1847. Not much stopped those olde circuit riding preachers, though, and with the help of Rev. David Maze of today's West Ohio Conference, we will hear from Brother Quinn at 8:00, 9:20, and 11:00 am this "Heritage Sunday."

 

Come hear about some enduring grace and lasting values this Sunday!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's aiming for that "almost 80 years together" mark. Tell him about what's enduring to you at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 5-15

Faith Works 5-15-10

Jeff Gill

 

Just one quarter-century later…

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So here we are, married for 25 years.

 

It's more than that, actually, since we dated for four years before that. My wife and I passed the "known each other half our lives mark" a while back, and (ahem) are now married for that percentage of our journeys as well.

 

It seems like I've known her forever, and that we just met a little while ago: funny how that is.

 

25 years isn't one of those major mega anniversaries, what with Willard Scott having all these 75 and 80 year marriages on along with the centenarians. 50 is golden, 75 is diamond, and 25 is silver, but after our microwave broke last week and the new one arrived (happy anniversary, honey!) it feels like it ought to be the Styrofoam jubilee, or maybe corrugated.

 

We can't say that "everyone said it wouldn't last," because they didn't; the campus ministry where we met and ultimately married (yes, we met at a church committee meeting, it was kismet) would often get very excited about engagement announcements during the post-worship fellowship time. When we announced ours, the reaction was a polite, "well, sure." Apparently it was both obvious and inevitable.

 

Staying married used to be that, which of course it is not anymore. 25 years may be a harder trick than getting to 50 these days, given a generational shift between those two eras that's still hitting us with aftershocks. And now, with medical advances, if you can build a marriage to the quarter-century mark, it should readily stand the storms of life and tests of the times to a half-century and beyond.

 

The big increase in this last twenty years has been in the early divorce. I know that some reading this would like me to make the Biblical and moral case for why cohabitation is wrong, which I'm happy to preach on at length on a Sunday, but in a 700 word column aimed at a general audience thinking variously about what faith means, I'm content with saying: we've run a generation long experiment on cohabitation as a tool for building healthier, happier marriages, and the data are in.

 

It doesn't work.

 

Cohabitation doesn't promote stability throughout your life, it doesn't increase marital happiness, and it doesn't reduce divorce. Quite the contrary. The fact that I know a number of couples who lived together, sometimes for quite a while, before "tying the knot" in a legal or liturgical sense, and have stayed married for a long time – that just means that demographically there are more people who have lived together, but the stats are pretty clear that the numbers go strongly towards cohabitation making relationships weaker, less stable, more likely to split. The exceptions, blessings to all of them, don't contradict that fact.

 

Churches have struggled with how to minister to couples in this new environment. If you say things like . . . oh, like what I just said in this column, from the pulpit, are you condemning all the couples now married and solid and stable sitting in your pews, who lived together before marriage? How do you teach a clear message to your youth when not only the culture but institutions and even most of their families will be telling them something quite different?

 

I would affirm, both here and in my preaching mode, that the key here is not to say what marriage is better than or what manner of life is worse, but to simply proclaim, with great love and clarity what marriage is: a model of God's intention for Christ and the church, a secure basis for building not only families but the indispensible element of community itself, and a school for the soul in good times and bad.

 

Do other manners of life know nothing of those things? Certainly not, but I can say, from scripture, and tradition, and my own beloved experience that it is certainly and indisputably true that an enduring marriage is the revelation of God's redemptive work in creation, an ultimate reality of its own that connects us the reality that is God.

 

Thanks for preaching me that sermon, Joyce. I'm ready to listen another 25 years!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about life & marriage & listening at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 5-8-10

Jeff Gill

 

Not quite "I gave at the office," but close

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Giving is often a faith community subject in the fall, but not so much in the spring.

 

Which makes this a great time to bring it up, actually.

 

April is usually a time when we think about taxes, and May has just opened with a major set of levy votes for police, fire, school, and library causes, along with mental health & recovery programming going up for a local levy vote for the first time.

 

As we all (I'm pretty sure now) know, while the libraries and some local schools came through this "democratic" process with the support they need to maintain programs and staffing at current levels, much was voted down. The economy is obviously a major factor in these votes, where often very vocal "no" voters will say they support the idea or purpose involved (county parks & green space, vocational education, counseling for low income families), but that their personal situation and that of their friends and families makes a tax increase, especially on property, an unbearable burden.

 

Which may be true. I will note, with cautious skepticism, that I've worked on levy committees in West Virginia and Ohio over the last twenty years, and it's never been a good time to pass a levy, and it's always a tough time for people on fixed incomes. Just saying "well, but now is really a bad time" sounds valid the first few times you hear it, but when you always do, it doesn't represent the compelling case you once thought it was.

 

Individual congregations have to face a similar situation when it comes to giving and launching new efforts, starting outreach initiatives, or just maintaining staff salaries. In good times and bad, there's always someone who will say at board or council or cabinet or vestry (however your fellowship rolls, leadership-structure-wise), "hey, my pay has been cut and/or my benefits are decreasing."

 

Or "many of our people are on fixed incomes." It's not that these statements aren't true, but if one or two people saying it becomes definitive, then you will never grow, expand, or progress in any areas, and your staff will stagnate at best, or lose value in their compensation, broadly defined.

 

My use of "scare quotes" around "democratic" processes above can apply to both church life and our peculiar civic polity in Ohio for school and other public service funding (watersheds can just impose wide-ranging assessments, but schools have to keep using up volunteer and staff time to run election campaigns on a steadily backwards running treadmill?).

 

Even when levies pass, people say "well, not everyone voted on this, it was just [blank] percent." When they fail, adherents say "it's too bad only [blank] percent of the district can vote this down."

 

Now, in church life, I have to admit something: democracy is not an ultimate value in most faith matters. Someone once said "One person and God equals a majority," and we can all think of situations where we wouldn't want a majority vote to determine divine guidance. So I am not at all opposed to, but I am quite cautious about assuming that voting is a good way for a congregation to cast a vision. Leadership is needed, leaders to form and present and explain a vision for where the community is going.

 

On the other hand, there is a blunt force democratic aspect, however your church organizes leadership, hierarchical or congregational, to weekly and monthly giving. Make no mistake about it, that's a vote. Vision casting has to take that into account, which is better than churches getting direct tax subsidies as in state churches such as most of Europe still has. The offering is a rolling referendum, which like polling, can't replace vision, but it should inform that process.

 

Tax season is often a time when each of us can assess our own giving with blunt accuracy, looking in our own giving mirror. The Obamas gave 6% of their adjusted gross income to charity last year, which is pretty good considering that the average churchgoer in America last year gave 2.2%. I should note that the Bushes gave 18% their last year in office, but Obama also directed his entire Nobel award cash to charity.

 

Joe Biden apparently just dropped a few twenties in the plate as it was passed when he attended, putting him right with the average guy, as he likes to say, which in this case is under 1%. Where are you in this spectrum? How are you "voting" on vision?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's committed to tithing but thinks there's nothing wrong with aiming for 20%. Tell him how you shape your churches' vision at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 5-6

Notes From My Knapsack 5-6-10

Jeff Gill

 

What Time It Is, All Nature Tells

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Do you recall View-Master reels? Those 3-D picture discs you slid into a little fake binocular and pointed at a light source, and then pushed the lever on the side to watch the Everglades or Disneyland or astronauts go by in depth and dimension.

 

There was one of a set I no longer have (and I've got a bunch of them still) of a floral clock somewhere, with blossoms that opened in turn through the day, from dawn to dusk.

 

When my Scout troop was about to go visit Greenfield Village, I was kind of excited to learn that they had a floral clock at the entrance, but it was a letdown to find that theirs was just a mechanism for a large set of hands sweeping across flowers arranged as the numbers – it wasn't what I'd come to think of as a floral clock.

 

In truth, it's hard to have a clock garden that keeps good time on a daily basis, but you could have good luck with a calendar garden: by the month, anyhow.

 

We've had the crocuses and daffodils and hyacinth come, and now gone, about to be replaced by peonies and tulips aplenty in May, who will then take a back seat to day lilies and marigolds heading into Memorial Day and the turn to June.

 

Further up into the trees and shrubs, the forsythia are fading along with the flowering pear and cherry, magnolias came and went between the next to last snow and the last snow, but the redbud is lasting right through the spring to tie the earliest blossoms to the fullness now of dogwood. About the time those dogwood petals drop, further up in the canopy we'll see catalpa in full flower, followed by the very tip top skyward facing tulip poplar blooms, all orange and yellow with a hint of peach and pink.

 

Roses will get going seriously about the time greenhouse annuals take over the flower beds, throwing off this whole idea, but it's still true that nature has a clock all her own.

 

I was thinking even more about this as I read about our early settler families, and how special a treat was . . . bread made from wheat ground into flour. They considered the first loaves of their own grain milled into useable and storable form important, because it meant the first steps toward freedom from what was available.

 

We talk nostalgically and responsibly about the utility of eating what is in season and local, but in those pioneer records, it's clear that what this meant in practice, for them, was lots of bear meat most of the year, deer meat other times, and for variety, they made sandwiches. They were a slab of bear meat, put between two slabs of deer meat. I kid you not. No bread, remember?

 

When day lily buds were full, and squash blossoms flowered, you threw those in the frying pan and ate them 'til you were sick of them. Then you got sick of squash, until it was time to get sick of potatoes and onions. But there was always more bear meat.

 

In the modern produce department, time is frozen, sort of. This has costs and implications we need to think about, but we could start by remembering just how thankful we should be for sandwiches in May with good Ohio bacon, local farmstand tomatoes, and some California lettuce atop mayo from wherever they make it and pasteurize it.

 

Or you could wish for the natural days of a deer-bear-deer sandwich to get you through pushing a wooden plow across your acreage! No wonder they drank so much whiskey . . .

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your favorite sandwich, in season or out, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-30

Faith Works 4-30-10

Jeff Gill

 

Be well, or at least get better

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Going back to the subject of health and health care (and thanks for all the e-mails), this is a subject that is of great interest to people of faith.

 

Pretty much everyone who practices a religious tradition acknowledges that there is no spiritual practice that promises guaranteed cures all the time. The stereotype of the faith healer who claims that complete healing is possible as long as "you believe, completely" is just that, a stock figure used to mock and not a description of any actual consistent reality.

 

What is found across denominations and traditions is the belief that for a variety of reasons, healing can take place physically, as well as spiritually. Miracles do happen, say most believers, and we are invited to ask for them or seek them out, but the fact that they don't always show up is handled differently in various churches, while all concede that they might not.

 

Again, blaming the victim for their illness is so rare in actual practice (versus in fiction) as to hardly be worth discussing.

 

Still, there's always a church somewhere it seems with a family in the news, over withholding medical care from a child or refusing to wear glasses because "it would be a sign of a lack of faith in the possibility of divine healing."

 

That's disturbing, but it's also the case that there were doctors who recommended smoking before track meets "to improve your wind" back in the 1920s, and in the early 1980s not a few doctors told their patients to never eat eggs again if they could help it.

 

So we should ignore all doctors today? Nope, didn't think so.

 

I'm sure there's no end of things in medical care today that two hundred years from now will look, to them, then, the same way bleeding a patient in 1799 looks to us now: "hey, you crazy docs, you just killed George Washington!" Chemotherapy and radiation therapy come to mind, but they are the best we have in 2010. In 2210, they'll say "why didn't you give them the anti-cancer shot when they were babies?"

 

Meanwhile, we turn to our spiritual practices as both an indicator and an index of our physical health. If I've learned anything from my health challenges of the last few years, it's that the condition of my body impacts my ability to be spiritually present, whether in worship, in service, or just in my own meditation & prayer life. Likewise, my spiritual robustness helps me to keep on going even when the physical support is not there, or even pulling you back.

 

It's not either/or, it's both/and.

 

Which is why so many churches offer "parish nurse" programs (do an internet search for that phrase – they take many forms), along with congregations that even put together a community clinic as part of their community outreach. That's not an "extra," it's an essence.

 

Caring for the physical body is basic "temple maintenance" (cf. I Cor. 6:19), and it is hard, HARD to pray, with focus and consistency, when your body is tugging your attention back to the self and all its distractions. By the same token, when your spiritual life is a mess, or empty, you are that much faster to self-medicating, whether that's with food, alcohol, drugs, or just pure, unmitigated sloth.

 

Those are the kinds of unspiritual uncenteredness that lead to a body-temple with cracks in the facade and broken sidewalks outside, leaky roofs inside with stopgap buckets set all around, and crumbling plaster with erupting mold and mildew along the baseboards.

 

What would it look like for churches and temples and mosques to take health more seriously? How do we integrate our spiritual care with the medical resources that, quite frankly, do so much for us and add years and years to our lives? Can the building maintenance and the program services departments communicate?

 

Body and spirit are not in opposition: at least in traditional Christian teaching, the body is not a curse or a mistake, but a gift. It is how we experience the gift and blessing of creation, which is why resurrection is mind, body, & spirit, not just a floaty ghosty thing.

 

We need to start living that teaching in how we preach to and with and through our bodies, which is the essence of holistic health care.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he knows that his tuckpointing needs some work around the middle stories of the building. Tell him about your maintenance plans at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-24

Faith Works 4-24-10

Jeff Gill

 

Secrets and Hidden Agendas, Not So Much

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Spring is a beautiful time, but not always a very calm one. "Be still and know that I am God," says Psalm 46:10, but this is often a season of ferment, turmoil, and uncertainty.

 

Board meetings get tense as the winter deficit is barely balanced out with the Easter bump; plans for vacation season activities reach fever pitch, whether VBS or camp or special series' for adults and families; visitors are either making or not making a choice to return after Easter.

 

Pastors feel the stress of the Easter season not quite ease out of their lower back muscles, but a summer vacation is neither on the calendar nor in the cards; lay leaders start horse trading responsibilities for the post-Memorial Day Sundays.

 

And I think you could blame it on tree pollen if not the Adversary himself: people just get a bit wacky. The fringe stuff starts to get handed around during coffee fellowship (Madalyn Murray O'Hair: still dead, people!), long-simmering questions come up in Sunday school, and there's always someone asking for an evening Bible study of Revelation.

 

Just to help clear out some of the spiritual underbrush for the spring/summer season . . .

 

There is a God. All creation, no matter how you read the signs and chronologies, points to an intention and plan somewhere behind it all.

 

Death is not the end. Spring is when any child should be able to start to make sense of this fantastic belief.

 

The Bible rocks. No, seriously. We're talking the wisdom and discernment of three millennia, sorted and culled in a process that took place right out in the open, written in Hebrew & Greek which are, yes, "foreign languages," but not so strange that any thoughtful person can't use a few simple tools to double check for themselves, translated by dozens of prayerful, careful, thorough teams into many translations. Read any three translations side-by-side of a common passage, and feel the underlying truth start to come alive for you, maybe even something a bit more Alive than that.

 

Jesus did not get married, didn't have any children, and so they didn't end up ruling France or hiding stuff in Scottish chapels, he didn't have much in the way of advice to give anyone, then or now: he just kept pointing out what God was doing, until all that was left was to [ital]be[end ital] what God was doing.

 

That woman on the other side of the church who keeps looking at you that way? She doesn't hate you, that's just how she looks. She can't even remember your name. she has acid reflux.

 

All those people who are trying to stop your ideas? They don't object to your ideas at all. They don't like any ideas, and haven't for decades.

 

The end times? We're in them. Have been since the Ascension. Get over it. As John Wesley said, asked about it while weeding, "First, I would finish working in my garden." Neither the day nor the hour – that seems straightforward enough for anyone.

 

Your budget? You have plenty of money. You may not have enough to do what you want to do (translated: "what we need to do…"), or what you hope to do, but compared to a church in the Congo whose weekly offering is about $2.27, you're rolling in it. What is God calling you to do with that?

 

Is God speaking to you? My prophetic answer is: Duh. Constantly. Sometimes you need to be quiet (Ps. 46:10 again), and sometimes you just need to pay attention (Prov. 26:11); sometimes God speaks directly to us through the Bible (read Augustine's "Confessions" for a wonderful example of this) and sometimes indirectly through others (also read the "Confessions" for a tale of children at play when the saint was at pray).

 

God has said quite a bit with strong emphasis and unambiguous meaning (Deuteronomy 30:19), and no little amount of wisdom that adapts itself to the hearer's need and situation (Acts 2:42); God speaks to your heart all the time, but you need to not try to understand that all alone. You need others to help you sort out your own indigestion from the movement of the Spirit, and you need others to help you actually do what you've never really had any trouble hearing clearly from the start.

 

Or as a brother in ministry once said to me, "Giddy-yup."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-17

Faith Works 4-17-10

Jeff Gill

 

Beyond the Health Care Debate, A Healing Discussion Is Needed

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Back in junior high school, our town had a 135^th anniversary come up (I'm not even sure if there's a Latin tag for that like "quasiquicentennial" for 125^th).

 

Our social studies teacher saw an opportunity, and grasped it firmly, getting the local paper to basically give us both the occasion, and a chance to fill some pages.  Each of us in the history club (yes, and I was in the AV club, too) got an assignment, and I ended up with the hospital.  I forget how the various civic institutions were parceled out, and I recall wanting to draw the assignment to write about the library – I loved going to the library, and who wants to go to the hospital? But I embraced the inevitable, and recalled that the hospital administrator was on my paper route.

 

The next time I collected there, I asked Mr. Malasto if I could interview him, and he was entirely delighted to say yes: I barely avoided having to do the interview right there, but the route was only half finished.

 

The next day, I went back, notebook in hand, after the route was delivered, and sat down at his kitchen table. "You know, Jeff, your church founded our hospital."

 

That was not what I was expecting to hear. I had a bunch of questions in mind, but that just completely threw me. A church, founding a hospital? How does that happen?

 

Back in the late 1800s it happened that way quite often, actually. Over the years, I've always had this extra incentive to find out what the "origin myth" of the local hospital is, and most of them trace back to a start in a big old house near a church where a few walls got knocked out, some "casual wards" were set up with beds shoved in remarkably close together, and a surgical suite arranged often in the solarium (good clear north light is good for both artists and pre-electricity surgeons, it turns out).

 

As a ministry student, I did my Clinical Pastoral Education at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, and many is the time I've glanced up at the large white neon cross that is the remnant of the "White Cross Society" and Methodist history behind Riverside Hospital over in Columbus – and you don't have to know much history to intuit the Catholic roots of places called Mount Carmel or St. Ann's.

 

Once upon a time, churches did health care. It was part of their outreach and mission like baking brownies, raking leaves, and providing surgical services. It looks kind of crazy there on the page, put like that, doesn't it? But that's how it started.

 

Baking and lawn care have stayed pretty much in our ballpark, but hospital care has grown and developed in some interesting (ahem) ways. If a church said "we're planning on starting a hospital," your response is likely to be "oh, in Haiti?" and you're thinking of more of a glorified clinic, with cinderblock walls.

 

If the person replied "No, here in Licking County," you might just wonder how long they've been off their meds. Technology, billing, staffing – a congregation just can't do that kind of stuff, right?

 

What the modern world of medical care can and should help us consider as people of faith is the distinction between cures, and healing. A medical cure today is likely to include surgery and prescriptions and rehab work, and the growth or tumor or injury is excised or shrunk or repaired. That's all important, useful work, and the cure rates for all kinds of formerly fatal illnesses is simply amazing.

 

But even when there's a cure, there's often still a need for healing. Healing can take place when there is no cure, in fact, perhaps even more importantly so. Cardiac patients still feel cracked open long after their sternum knits back together, they need healing. AIDS patients who have their illness under control still feel disconnected from society, they need healing. Hospice care is not a matter of dials and knobs and white coats (mostly), but of healing, for the patient and for those who love them.

 

In all the debates around health care these days, can churches still do healing? We can visit and pray and participate in preventive care and be a meaningful part of the medical world, and miraculous cures are a subject all their own, but what about healing? Is this an area we can see ourselves in with a central role, or has the hospital experience left us thinking that a spot beside the bed is the only proper place for faith?

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about healing work you've been a part of at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 4-15

Notes From My Knapsack 4-15-10

Jeff Gill

 

Meeting Friends You'd Never Seen Before

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Have you had the experience of meeting old friends for the first time?

 

Most of us have had the chance to run into someone, start to interact with them, and suddenly feel like we've known them for years . . . and those opportunities usually do end up lasting for the rest of your life.

 

Last fall, I walked into the Avery-Downer House on Broadway, here in Granville, to do a program for Ann Lowder and the Robbins Hunter Museum she so ably directs. Ann smiled wisely at me while talking to some earlier arrivals, and waved me back to the Long Room, in the back of the 1842 Greek Revival marvel next door to the library.

 

I walked into the room, nodded at Robbins Hunter, Jr.'s portrait in his usual spot over the sideboard, turned, and stopped cold.

 

On the north wall were two old friends, familiar looking, and quite new in a very antique sort of way.

 

There were a couple of other people already in the room that I fear I was quite brusque with, being minimally polite until I could turn again and walk a bit closer to the pair of portraits in modern, elegant, simple black and gold frames.

 

After I'd stared from near and far, straight ahead and at an angle (yep, these were real, original oil paintings, from somewhere in the early 1800s), Ann came in the room, beamed at me, and said "Well, what do you think?"

 

"What do I think? I think you have two new Amzi Godden portraits!"

 

The sneak had been holding out on me, but in fairness to Ann, they'd just arrived the previous week as a bequest to the Robbins Hunter Museum from a lady who had visited the Avery-Downer House perhaps only once, back in the late 1960s.

 

Jean Rumsey had a passion for genealogy that fired her spirit well into her 90s; her home in Lombard, Illinois was so much a workshop for assembling family history from across New Jersey and Connecticut and back into England, into the mists of the medieval era, that she slept on a sofa in the living room, so the breadth of her bed could be yet another platform for sorting and sifting the folders and forms which traced her family history. Those relations included the two elderly figures now on a wall in Granville.

 

James & Euphemia Reeder are buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Newark; they both died not too long after these portraits were painted, just before the Civil War. Thanks to the staff at Cedar Hill, I quickly found their plots, but the gravestones are long gone, now unmarked if well recorded. A few letters in the Licking County Historical Society point to their home near 11^th & Merchant Streets "up on the bluff," and they have a pious history with Newark's First Presbyterian Church where both James, and Amzi Godden's father Lewis were elders and builders of the first church there, and where Euphemia "lived her love to God, and died a triumphant death."

 

In these two paintings, though, they are remembered, visible, and in a fascinating post-Easter sense, very much alive. You should meet them!

 

The Robbins Hunter Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 pm or by special arrangement; call Ann at 587-0430 or e-mail annlowder@windstream.net for more information.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about you friends, old and new, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-10

Faith Works 4-10-10

Jeff Gill

 

Clericalism and Its Discontents

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Respect for the clergy is one of those categories of "how things used to be" that I suppose I could have written about, along with other changes in the life of faith communities in general and Christian denominations in particular, Protestant or Catholic alike. (I leave Orthodoxy out only because they're fairly under-represented in Licking County, although I know they're out there, usually driving into Columbus for worship.)

 

This past Easter season saw a firestorm of clergy sexual abuse coverage, most of it stemming back to stories coming out of the 1960s and 70s, within the Catholic churches of the US, Ireland, and Germany. Questions of proper handling then and cover-ups or pay-offs later all gave much fodder to the usual media shots taken at the Roman Catholic Church, using eminently telegenic shots of Vatican liturgy with Pope Benedict XVI front and center.

 

That's called having your cake and eating it, too.

 

If you think I'm downplaying the problem of clergy sexual abuse, you've not been reading my columns for very long.  It's a huge issue, and one that I believe deserves cultural and media attention.  Thank heavens that, since Martin Luther reaffirmed the right of clergy to marry back in the 1500s, Protestant Christians have had no sexual scandals among their ministers.

 

Oh, wait.

 

My point is that there's a gleeful piling-on aspect to all this pre-Easter froth, where some, especially in TV news, have been dealing from the bottom of the deck in their treatment of the Catholic tradition. They want to show they're addressing religion, since the research on their dwindling audiences shows that many of us located somewhere in between their New York and LA studios actually attend worship services and read old books for current guidance. So they want the visuals, but they also want to get in snide references to hypocrisy and tell untold stories hinting at mystery and hidden secrets. Think "DaVinci Code."

 

The reality is that these stories are very simple, and not unique to the Catholic faith. Powerful people in charge of organizations tend to not like to turn in their own employees, and back in the 60s, 70s, and even the 80s, a "therapeutic model" was in the ascendancy that said "let's not traumatize the kids further, and let's send the abusers to a remote residential treatment program."

 

Which turns out to be a fairly muddleheaded way to proceed, but it wasn't a Catholic piece of muddleheadedness.

 

But where's the story in saying that? And folks who disagree with a male only clergy, or dislike clerical celibacy, will have their own reasons for pushing these stories a bit farther than they really can roll on their own.

 

Meanwhile, if you're thinking I'm saying any of this as a Catholic myself: not so much, nor is anyone in my immediate family. I grew up with more extended family members scared of Catholicism than understood it (another element to the coverage I'm not even going to get into).

 

Just as a general point -- I said to my fellow mainline Protestant clergy colleagues back 20 years ago "don't enjoy laughing about Swaggart & Bakker too much, because they are impacting us and our churches, too." Oh, no, they all cried, those fellows aren't like us at all, and our parishoners and communities know we aren't them.

 

That next year, with no national financial issues roiling the waters, the United Methodist Church saw a 3+% decrease in giving; many UMC, PCUSA, UCC, & DoC churches in our area saw the same or more, up to around 5%.

 

I fear that while I tend to hang out with a more mixed mainline and evangelical crowd these days, they are, too many of them, repeating this mistake: I say "beware your amusement with the plight of the Catholic hierarchy flailing to explain their incompetence and irresponsibility in reporting child sex abuse." Oh, no, they respond, no one would confuse us with the Pope in Rome and all his pomps . . . and the current generation hears and feels even more affirmation for their lack of respect or consideration of any authority, temporal or spiritual, that is relevant to their lives from the leadership of wiser, more senior figures.

 

When we Protestant Christians get in our own digs on the Vatican and the Roman magisterium ("wrong in 1517, still wrong today!" a clergy acquaintance nearby chortled in his blog), we may be digging a pit that we'll shortly find ourselves inside.

 

I don't like the view.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he will never be Pope. Tell him a story from your road to faith at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-3

Faith Works 4-3-10

Jeff Gill

 

At the Crack of Dawn, Rumblings of a Cloudless Sky

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The "crack of dawn," no doubt, thought the gardener, as he rummaged in the dim pre-dawn light through his rough leather sack for the last of yesterday's loaf of bread.

 

Right enough, with the sky finally peeling back to show stars and the promise of sunlight, after these last few days of darkness at noon, ominous roiling clouds overhead, and the very earth shaking right through yesterday.

 

It began Friday, with a shock in mid-afternoon enough to knock a man off his feet, toppling grave markers and it's said in the streets that even the high, wide veil in the Temple itself tore from top to bottom, as the vast walls of the inner chambers heaved about.

 

Strange days, he thought, but now the first day of a new week, and a new week is just what we need. After the distraught frenzy of the crowds, building and growing through the Passover preparations, rioting in the porticos of the Temple itself, Roman processions in the street flaunting their condemned captives, snatching innocent pilgrims out of the throng for commandeered dirty work on their behalf: the Passover itself yesterday was subdued, quiet, with just the occasional shaking deep beneath everyone's feet to keep the uneasy calm off balance.

 

Now light is splitting the sky overhead, and the nearly visible beams of dawn reach over the Mount of Olives, touch the gold peaks of the Temple as with fire, and soon even this rocky garden patch on the west side of the city, just beyond the walls, would have light enough to move about without fear of a foot set wrong, a wrenched ankle for your troubles.

 

It was not the first time the Roman swine had used his property for an execution ground, and it was not as if he had any choice in the matter. No one bore him any ill will, for who could say "No" to Rome? Only messianic raving preachers on marketplace platforms could shout contradiction to the imperial eagles as they passed, and they were snatched up and stuffed away so quickly you couldn't keep their names straight in memory. All the Johns and Jameses and Joshuas started to blur together.

 

What this dawn and new week meant was a setting to rights. Crowds gathered, not too disorderly with legionaries nearby, but new spring flowers were trampled, gravestones not shaken by earthquake might have been swung about to make a place to stand and see more clearly . . . what kind of thoughtless fool would stand on a tomb slab? Didn't they know that someday they would want the peace of their grave to be uninterrupted into the ages? The Sadducees said that death was oblivion and the disposition of the body was no matter to anyone, least of all to the dead, but in his garden, the body would be given rest and respect, and the . . . soul, or what ever the Almighty might determine, would have a place, here if not in Sheol.

 

Dawn breaking over the western wall of Jerusalem, and the crust worn down by equally eroded teeth, the old gardener stood to survey his plot. The one piece of property he owned outside of the city proper, it was a rough square of rocky knolls, level spaces of bush and planted herbs or flowering shrubs, the vales each with their funerary niches and large stones to seal them from the dogs.

 

The Romans were all too good about cleaning up their own messes, so the post holes chipped into the higher rocks were bare to the sky, only the stain of blood on the bare ground about them showing their purpose. No nails, fragments of wood, or even nastier pieces of anything were left. It would be the litter of the witnesses only to pick up, and a few broken stems to either saw off or bend back.

 

Yet even at this hour, there was some disturbance further below; he could see, down where there was still some shadow, a figure quickly striding away in a clean white robe, and closer still a group of women rushing towards where he stood, holding ointment jars and no doubt looking for a particular tomb, or help with moving a stone.

 

The gardener sighed. This was never the start of a good day, or good news. He hitched up his robe at the shoulders, and walked towards the women to see what they had to say.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him an early morning tale at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 4-1

Notes From My Knapsack 4-1-10

Jeff Gill

 

Putting Things In Their Proper Place

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Not to be mean, or anything like that, but it's kind of amusing to watch my fellow grocery shoppers down at Ross Market, now that the expansion is pretty much rolled out and open.

 

Some of us take a Delta Force approach to stopping by the store: get in, get out, be noticed by no one other than our target. Even the more leisurely of us have a pattern, a cycle of up one aisle, down the next, weaving through most but maybe skipping the soap & cleanser aisle two out of three weeks.

 

All of us have had to readjust, and set new patterns, as the dairy and lunchmeat products, "phase two" after produce, have been flung to new corners of the gladiatorial arena, and while the chow mein noodles, dal tadka, and Sriracha hot sauce are still where they "belong," most of the rest of our mental snooze button semi-conscious shopping now must be intentional, and awake, or at least aware.

 

Chips and crackers? New spot. Tomato paste? Same old spot, but mozzarella: new spot. Connect the spots, and make a wobbly spiral as our new cycle jerks into motion, pulling us from what we thought was the end of our errand, back across our path to go back and get an item we didn't know we only remembered for lo, these many years, because of the thing next to it that caught our awareness. If it isn't there, we daydream or anticipate our way right past the item that brought us to the store in the first place.

 

We like what we're used to, and what we're used to, we like, even if we don't (or shouldn't) like it, because we're used to it. And if it isn't what we're used to, even when it's better, almost exactly what we'd grumbled ought to be, we grumble that it's been changed, and we don't like it. Poor us!

 

I can only imagine how the poor Romans must have felt. There they were, 2,000 years ago, accustomed to the idea that when they cruelly executed a dissenter, he stayed dead, and went to anonymity in a borrowed grave or common trashpit. The Roman Empire was good at law, architecture, and killing, whether wholesale (legions) or retail (occupation governments). If you wanted a successful co-optation of local leadership, you didn't slaughter wholesale (legionaires), but picked a few to kill who had stuck their necks up and out, in such a way as to make sure everyone tempted to kick against the traces would notice (Judean procurator handbook).

 

When things don't go the way you're used to, it seems to provoke a bit of peevishness, some contrary reactions, even when reasonably considered it's news that's good for you and for many. An expanded local grocery store, one with a commitment to cultural diversity in selection, Ohio foods where possible, and global sensitivities for all tastes, can only be a good thing, right? Yet there we frown and fret up and down the aisles as we grapple with existential angst that the rye bread is not where it once was.

 

And the possibility that a political prisoner, once executed, might reveal by his return something essential about the very nature of reality itself – that should be good news, but neither occupier nor occupied seemed to see it, at the time, as a blessing. Easter morning is about people not quite being where they were "supposed" to be: Jesus not buried in his tomb when it was time to apply the mortuary spices; women running into men's gatherings with incredible stories, centurions saying "Surely this man was the Son of God."

 

Unlikely, and inconvenient, I know. But somehow, it all works out in the end.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him something unexpected at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-27

Faith Works 3-27-10

Jeff Gill

 

Palm Fronds Above and Below

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You may well know that this Sunday is Palm Sunday. The first of the events recorded in all four of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that begins the final week of Jesus' public ministry is a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus rides into the city evoking all kinds of signs and symbols from Judaic tradition to say that he was fulfilling what the Torah and the Prophets had promised, from the humble animal he rode to the Psalm 118 chant of the crowd.

 

We tend to turn fairly quickly in church to the fact that it's this same crowd, so to speak, that will be calling out "Crucify him!" in mere days.

 

But before we go there, I want to stop and think a bit about those palms, and what they mean. In the traditions of the wider church from Augustine through Alexander Campbell to Tom Wright today, there's the reminder that each story and key element of the Biblical narrative has a practical, contextual meaning, and also a symbolic, spiritual level of understanding, then both triangulate a new meaning into our time and place. So the donkey Jesus rides isn't a parade float because they didn't have those back there (don't laugh, kids don't know that, and it helps to explain it), and it also ties Old Testament scripture from the Hebrew prophets into the New Testament gospel account, making us think about what it means to celebrate Christ's entry into our own lives.

 

And there's the palms. They have the same sort of layered meaning that kicks up some dust we have to sort through for modern comprehension. There's a quick note that is often made in Sunday school materials or in preachers' sermons, as to the fact that palms were laid in the roadway to mark the procession of a king or great leader in triumph, so doing this for Jesus was a message to the Roman authorities that they couldn't mistake about how the crowd looked to him as the promised one, the Moshiach, God's anointed.

 

Why, though? Why palms? Well, think about ancient near eastern roads, even in a capital like Jerusalem. They aren't paved with asphalt or striped for passing lanes: they're dirt. More to the point, they're either impassable mud, or they're dust. Thick, heavy, choking dust, and the passing of a cart or the running of a pack of dogs could raise up a cloud that dimmed the sun.

 

If someone was about to pass by that you honored, that you respect, that you want to see clearly, and they have a large crew of fellow celebrants with them, then you're going to have a problem. They're going to kick up huge clouds of dust, and not only will you not be able to see them, but you can't say to your friends "Hey, look there, this is the one I was telling you about!"

 

It's all dust.

 

So your response is to go to the date palms nearby, climb up to their spreading tops (or pay a child a shekel to climb for you) and tear off as many fronds as they can reach. The green branches with their broad flat leaves will be crushed and soon enough dust themselves, but for that first passage over them, the dust below will be held at bay.

 

There's another thing, though. Those palms can come back, even if only a couple of the highest leaves are left to draw the sun for strength (and no farmer's child would ever be so foolish as to strip every leaf off a single palm), but it takes a while. A year at least, maybe longer to get the level of shade you had before. You can't just do this every week for the latest singer in the marketplace who passes by.

 

You will lose your shade, a bit of your own comfort, and set yourself up for a hard stretch ahead if you choose to make this act of honor in your own stretch of road. Should you do it? Who will pass by next?

 

Or do you want to sacrifice your spot of cool ease to help others to see this person; someone you think, you suspect, you believe to be the Christ of God?

 

The shouting draws nearer, the kids up in your palm tree look down, asking with their eyes, "well, do we or don't we?" What would you sacrifice to help others see the man on the donkey more clearly?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has no palm trees in his yard, drat the luck. Tell him what you'd do to help others see clearly at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-20

Faith Works 3-20-10

Jeff Gill

 

A Round of Applause Says Something

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There's a tradition, unwritten in most classical music programs, but widely understood among audiences, that you don't applaud between movements of a symphony or concerto.

 

I once attended a Pinchas Zukerman performance in a large Midwestern hall where he played the audience almost as well as he did his violin, holding the bow at the close of a note and turning away from the orchestra in such a way that even those who were new to a classical concert could tell that this moment was not a time to clap, yet. It was a collaboration that taught, with respect, and I've never forgotten that.

 

At other performances, I have to admit I've not only seen clapping between movements, but many so-called cultured members of the audience take just a little too much pleasure in looking around indignantly at their less well informed neighbors, either letting them know that they've committed a breach of etiquette, or wanting to show clearly who is with the in crowd, and who has mud on their face.

 

Which is kind of silly, considering that if you read contemporary accounts of concerts in Vienna and Berlin back between Mozart and Beethoven, audiences applauded wildly between movements, to communicate their liking (or dislike) of the new music as it came to the concert hall straight from the pens of the not yet classical composers. The convention of non-applause is really a creation of the late 1800's Victorian era sense of propriety, not a timeless given of concert life throughout history.

 

On the other hand, I very much enjoyed a concert I attended last year at Denison, in Burke Hall, where a string quartet played for just a hundred very attentive, focused, intent listeners, and there was great appreciation shown by the performers to us as an audience for our engagement in the music. Not a candy wrapper rustled, nor a cell phone went off, and there were no false moves by anyone between movements to make as if to clap. It made for a near transcendent moment, but I would have felt very bad for any one poor newbie who had stumbled in that night, had they started to show their appreciation in the best way they know how.

 

Should you clap in church? The stock response in "non clapping" congregations is that the singer(s) or players are offering their gifts to God, so our applause is itself inappropriate, since it's the showing of human approval which is getting in the way of the intended purity of the gift.

 

As you can probably tell by how I worded that, I don't quite see it that way. To be fair, I think there are times and situations where clapping is not appropriate, and the sustained focus of worship is the goal of the entire congregation, so an individual decision to clap is a very real distraction.

 

Sometimes, though, I fear that the whole non-clapping thing is more of a "we know who is in the know" deal, and a way to let people know who does and doesn't belong. Is applause really just a sign of human approval? Can you put your hands together to give thanks to God for the gifts just offered up, musically, as some worship leaders I know have said? It seems right to me.

 

The counter-response is often, "Really? So why aren't very powerful spoken prayers ever applauded? When was the last time you heard a sermon get a round of applause at the end?"

 

Exactly. There are cultural norms and expectations working both for and against applause. Spoken word presentations don't normally draw applause, but musical offerings do – except in church, or at least some churches. And churches that clap after are also ones more likely to clap during, or speak up (if not applaud) during (if not at the end) of sermons, with an "Amen, brother" or "Hallelujah, sister" after a particularly good point.

 

What's important to remember is that neither approach is Biblical or binding throughout church history. Clapping or not clapping is a cultural choice, and should always be secondary to the central intentions of any one worship service – and if there are strongly held opinions in any one church, it wouldn't hurt to make the local norm clear in the bulletin. Just spell it out, OK?

 

I know good Christians who wish their churches were more accepting of congregational participation through applause, and I also know good Christian folk who wish that they didn't have to clap for every wobbly, excruciating solo that's offered in worship. The strongest argument for non-clapping is that you can't gauge the relative merit of silences following two different performances. It's an equalizer.

 

And I know lots of performers of all sorts and with varying religious preferences who equally wonder why we started giving every concluding applause moment a full standing ovation, and what should we do about that?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he likes to applaud musical offerings in worship except when he shouldn't, whenever that is. Tell him your preferences on clapping at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 3-18

Notes From My Knapsack 3-18-10

Jeff Gill

 

Things Are Looking Up, So Should You

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Aside from the mystery of the large yellow object in the skies over central Ohio last week, we've all been looking up at gutters the last few weeks.

 

Some went "Ooooh, ahhhhh" at the beauty of the ice formations, some, watching the soffit pull away from the joists, go "aiiieeeee," and those who make their living repairing roofs and gutters go "cha-ching, baby!"

 

If you've had serious roof and eaves damage from the recently ended winter onslaught, my sympathies are with you, truly. We know what you're looking at, and it's your wallet's contents taking wings and flying away over the horizon.

 

For the rest of us, neither professional housewrights nor pained homeowners, this has been a great opportunity to lift up our gaze and notice some things.

 

St. Luke's Episcopal Church was thankful that their realization of structural needs in their 1835 gem of a building was before the weighty snowfall, since the engineering review gave them (thanks to agile consultants and digital cameras) a view of their undulating roofline. You don't have to be an engineer to know that's not a good sign, but it takes some specialist knowledge and no little money to figure out how to fix it (contributions are still quite welcome, by the way).

 

Walking down Broadway, I realize again and again how much I miss their weathervane, the ornamental top over the golden cupola dome, a figure that's not quite representational and not quite abstract. It reminds me of cod shapes from similar New England churches, and I always wonder if it wasn't an evocation of exactly that, modified out of deference to the lack of local salt-water fisheries in central Ohio.

 

If you just glance up above the storefronts on the main business district, all of which are interesting enough in their own right, you'll see a nearly invisible but omnipresent element of our downtown, like the frame on the Mona Lisa. The fact that you don't notice it is usually the point, but it's part of the overall experience.

 

Above the Prudential Real Estate awning is some lightly colored glass, an over-window element that was probably critically important back before electric light became both cheap, and the norm. Getting the most out of daylight for just getting your work done or lighting the shop was a budget decision that shaped success – now, it's mostly covered over, and not so important.

 

Above windows and signage and awnings, the very brick itself of many of Broadway's buildings shows a subtle layering and variation of texture, with shapes and outlines that keep them from being bland boxes like so much of modern retail architecture.

 

Along with the brick, you can see how woodworking and some tin-smithy have been woven together to make the illusion of fine stonecarving. The rot and decay that eats steadily away around the water-holding edges of this ornamentation shows you why stone is a great way to go, but it's fascinating to see what's been done.

 

Brackets, gables, moldings; dentils, acanthus leaves, egg and dart; the usual Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders atop pillars and pilasters – around Granville, we've got all this and more, in various states of original condition and patchy repair. Look up, and check it out, and make an old walk a new experience.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-13

Faith Works 3-13-10

Jeff Gill

 

An Object of Infinite Value

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This past week I went to a program over on OSU's Columbus campus, at the Wexner Center. I sighed as I wandered through the relentlessly off-putting architecture, found a friendly face at the front desk (Hi, Dawn!), and went on down to hear a talk in their theatre on "Do Museums Still Need Object?"

 

If you're at all curious, there's an answer provided by Steven Conn, a professor of public history at OSU and author of a book by the same title. It's "yes, but they don't play the same role they did a hundred years ago."

 

This program, moderated by the always marvelous Fred Andrle, included Dr. Conn and the directors of the four largest museums in Columbus, the heads of COSI, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Wexner Center itself, and the Ohio Historical Center represented by the new chief of the Ohio Historical Society. I thought they missed a bit of an opportunity by not rounding out the panel with the director of the Columbus Zoo, but it was a crowded ninety minutes as it was.

 

Everyone agreed that objects still had an important place in modern museum or science center visitor experience, but that the idea of coming to see a Hope Diamond or Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" or even King Tut's funerary mask doesn't quite occupy the same place in the imagination of a museumgoer today.

 

What had me thinking that there is a tie to our interests here on the "Your Faith" page is the role of special, or sacred objects. The unspoken theme in the presentations, as each panelist spoke, had a resonance in my mind of the "loss of the sacred" that some call a mark of the modern era.

 

Yes, I know, it's supposed to be all about the post-modern these days, but I think post-modernism is so yesterday that modernity is back in style again. Or at least we're back to a point where maybe we can try to figure out what "the modern era" stands for, since we seem to have jumped right across the World Wars into post-modernism without finishing up the questions posed by modern-ness (if that's a word, and it is now).

 

In the pre-modern world, there was such a thing as sacred space in worship buildings, and even the bar in the courtroom had a near mystical aura to its perimeter. Families had the good silver and the good china, and at church, the communion set in the most low church of Protestant congregations was silver and wrapped in purple velvet, rubbed and buffed in hushed tones.

 

My family was pretty solidly out of that tradition, with a fair amount of nervous skepticism in the air when matters Catholic came up as to confession or communion or priests, but it was a clearly understood matter that the Bible was never, NEVER to be placed on the floor, or have anything put on top of it – not another book, even a hymnal, let alone a coffee cup.

 

And I will confess as to having quietly and inobtrusively moved other people's cups off of Bibles out of sheer atavistic necessity. My grandmother is a quarter century gone from this life, but I can see her steely gaze out of the shadows when a mug sits down even on someone else's study Bible.

 

This is not the world we live in today, whatever you call it. Bibles are often paperback, underlined, and piled in corners even in churches with a very high view of Scripture; the title "the Reverend," not a professional designation like doctor (Dr.) or even esquire (Esq.), describes attributes to the relative sacredness of the person involved, bestowed through the act of ordination . . . but even in traditions that view ordination that way, the title is largely by the wayside.

 

So is it much of a surprise that, in a culture where even those who believe something is sacred believe that not much is, we don't hold much sacred? What would it mean to cry out "Is nothing sacred?" Or would you just get a quiet "Uh, no, not really" from most of the room?

 

In our churches, what is sacred? Where do we see the sacred, the set-apartness of God's intention, breaking through into our space, among our everyday items? Sacred objects shouldn't just be the good furniture in the parlor (keep those darn kids off of it), but what else is there? Some days, though, I think there is nothing much more sacred than a welcoming smile; certainly nothing more priceless.

 

Just don't put your coffee cup on my Bible. Nothing personal, it's just who I am. (And what does that say, anyhow?)

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he'd love to talk about where your sacred spots are around Licking County – tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-6

Faith Works 3-6-10

Jeff Gill

 

Carrying Everything Forward, Putting It All on the Altar

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This past week, we had to say "farewell" to Gretchen Dubbe, a woman of whom Proverbs 31 might well have been written.

 

Among all the other things I might say about her Christian commitment, her passionate concern for family, community, and those who think they are outside of those warm-hearted circles of concern, I have to mention… knitting.

 

She loved to knit, and she was in this, as in so much, interested in understanding it right down to the ground, and back up and out to teach (teacher was one of her many honored titles). She explained to me once, very matter-of-factly, how she delighted in having a couple of sheep, learning a bit about shearing, doing the carding and pulling and spinning, and making the yarn. "It makes the knitting even more meaningful," she explained. "And fun!"

 

It's Gretchen's sense of what knitting can be about, when you have a heart for every step in the process, that carries me with confidence into what is many people's least favorite part of corporate worship: the offering.

 

To some, the passing of the plates ("the holy hubcaps" my brother used to say) is the brief but interminable fundraising pause in the program, like a pledge drive week on public radio.

 

Ah, no. It is – it should be – the very heart, or at least close to the heart of the worship service.

 

Like Gretchen's sheep, the way I most appreciate the offering, and the way I envision it in my heart even when it isn't what's actually done, is as an integral part of communion, woven in from the start. In liturgical traditions, it is actually fairly common that when the collection of the offering is concluded, they are brought forward *along with* the elements. The wine (or grape juice) and the bread are carried up to the communion table (or altar), along with what we've just put in the plates, our envelopes and wadded cash and occasional jingling change.

 

In most Christian perspectives on communion, or the Eucharist, we as the gathered community present the grain and grapes, scattered and grown, gathered in harvest, crushed or ground, and transformed through our means into the bread and cup. We trust God to work through these gifts, in ways that may vary a bit from one church teaching to another, but all agreed that God makes of them that offering which points us to the presence of Christ.

 

That's what the offering is. Alongside, next to, even underneath the appearances, like the communion offering, those mostly financial offerings are from our labors, out of our hearts, flawed and broken though they may be, but presented so that God might transform them into an acceptable gift. They are changed by grace from above for building the kingdom of God here on earth.

 

Obviously, if your tradition doesn't have communion every week, you can't always have that visual reminder of the offering plates carried forward with the loaf and cup. But that's why, though we tend to forget it, most churches carry the offering forward at the end, often with a singing of the Doxology, the "Song of Praise;" not to give thanks for what we've given, but to rejoice in what God has promised to do with what we bring forward.

 

I could talk about the contents of what we give: recent studies show that active church members give 2.56% of their income, compared to 2.2% for the entire population. Check out the website emptytomb.org for more striking insight into what giving is and isn't in modern American Christendom, and try the Yoking Map button on the sidebar for some enlightening applications of what "empty tomb, inc." is trying to say.

 

But right now I just want to remind us of what offering is, and can be in our worship services. It's a place to remember that we never really put what we might in front of God, yet somehow something amazing can happen around our loaves and fishes. When we pour out the cup, and speak of Jesus' life's blood poured out, we also see a bright spark of long-ago sunlight transformed in a sphere of fruitfulness, now juice to flow through our veins.

 

Offering, and communion, and worship itself is about transformations, each hinting at a greater one beyond. When we lay to rest those we love in the cold wintry ground, is it really so strange to see the seeds of a greater transformation that leads to a brighter day, which only ends in rejoicing before the Throne of Life?

 

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow . . ."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; make an offering of a story through him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 3-4

Notes From My Knapsack 3-4-10

Jeff Gill

 

Looking Deeply Into the Landscape Around Us

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With the last of the leaves off of the trees, these remaining snows put a cloak on the landscape that reveals as much as it covers.

 

Over the next few weeks, we will be able to see as far into the forests and woodlots as we can at any point in the year, and these late winter, early spring snowfalls actually highlight and trace lines that are invisible under the summer canopy and fall leaf piles.

 

It might be as simple as some logs on a hillside, lying perpendicular to the standing trunks all around, putting up an accidental grid next to a road you drive all year unawares. It could be a house, a barn, or even an abandoned shed far away from your usual paths that each year about this time you say to yourself, "Oh, right, I'd forgotten that was back there."

 

The relationship of one ridge or rill to the next valley, and how the drive from the main road curls up to the distant home, all are visible and open now in ways that in just a few weeks will only make sense if you have business that takes you around that turn, and on into the opaque woods, one bend at a time.

 

The crusted thawed and refrozen snow gives you a chance to check out tracks that may fill too quickly for most to wander along in earlier winter. Whether a rabbit or a deer, or that dratted neighbor dog, you can trudge (if your shoes are up to the task, proof against the water that's everywhere under the white), and track, like Boone or Kenton, from steady trot to sudden leap, around tree trunks and ghosting through or over fences until you find the den, the hole, the hutch.

 

Scout Troop 65 went out on a Sunday after the height of our snowy season, in collaboration with the Granville Volunteer Fire Department, and dug out fire hydrants all around the core of the village and out along some of the side streets. A few good Scouts had already dug out the hydrants near their homes and around their neighborhoods. We spent a good, clear, refreshing afternoon chipping and shoveling, with a few of us adults judiciously using a powerblower for the deeply plowed under spots.

 

Stopping at spot by spot to dig and delve for that hidden chunk of blue and white metal, we had a chance to look around. Each place was familiar, but to actually pause instead of driving by at 35 mph (or 25 in the strict enforcement zones, natch), to not even be walking but to be stationary for a time, glancing around. You saw the houses and their relationships, the slopes and their outlines in ways that are fresh and new.

 

Now when I drive by, at a decent clip, my mind on a shopping list, I still see those blocks and neighborhoods and streets a bit more clearly, even seeing the parts I can't see in memory: where a brick patio picks up the sun to melt the snow, around a charming statue I didn't even know was there.

 

And I can see, even when I only hear them, the Carolina Chickadees and Eastern Bluebirds and brilliant Cardinals, their perches of forsythia and lilac and honeysuckle now fixed, leafless but all the more solid, firmly located in my mind's eye.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.